Burials - Reasons For Human Burial

Reasons For Human Burial

See also: Health risks from dead bodies and Revenant (folklore)

After death, a body will decay. Burial is not necessarily a public health requirement. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the WHO advises that only corpses carrying an infectious disease strictly require burial.

Human burial practices are the manifestation of the human desire to demonstrate "respect for the dead", and to prevent the possibilities of revenants harming the living. Cultures vary in their mode of respect.

Among the reasons for this are:

• Respect for the physical remains. If left lying on top of the ground, scavengers may eat the corpse, considered disrespectful to the deceased in many (but not all) cultures. In Tibet, Sky burials return the remains to the cycle of life and acknowledge the body as "food," a core tenet of some Buddhist practices.
• Burial can be seen as an attempt to bring closure to the deceased's family and friends. Psychologists in some Western Judeo-Christian quarters, as well as the US funeral industry, claim that by interring a body away from plain view, the pain of losing a loved one can be lessened.
• Many cultures believe in an afterlife. Burial is sometimes believed to be a necessary step for an individual to reach the afterlife.
• Many religions prescribe a particular way to live, which includes customs relating to disposal of the dead.
• A decomposing body releases unpleasant gases related to decomposition. As such, burial is seen as a means of preventing smells from expanding into open air.